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Prydain Wiki talk:Community Portal
Category:Community This is the general discussion page for the wiki! New founders should leave a nice welcome message and encourage new visitors and editors to leave a note to get the conversation started. ---- Prydain Wiki Style Guide Hello Companions! I wanted to offer some suggestions on contributing to/editing the articles at this site. Having spent the last two weeks and countless hours editing, adding to, creating and rearranging the site's pages, I've developed a few stylistic guidelines that I hope others will follow, in the interest of consistency. First is the use of the SPOILER text bar. It looks like this: You can make this bar by typing " ". It goes without saying (so I'll say it!) that the Spoiler bar should be placed on any page where secrets involving plot or character are revealed. Beyond this, however, is the question of placement. Many of the Chapter entries have the Spoiler bar at the very top of the page. But this high placement, in my opinion, deters the casual reader from gleaning basic, useful information about a given topic. If we move the Spoiler bar down the page, to an area just above the section that actually contains spoilers, then a visitor to the site, who might not yet have read all the books, can still get general facts about a character or chapter before being warned away by the pink text bar. So! Suggestion #1: Drop the spoiler bar down to where the spoilers actually begin. My next tip relates to Chapter articles as well. With the spoiler bar dropped to a point above the "Plot" heading on a page, it makes sense to add a little general, non-spoiler information to the top. So, following the top-of-the-page sentence that reads "The Name of This Chapter is the fifteenth chapter of The Name of The Book", I've begun inserting thematic information in the present tense. Two examples: "Here the themes of noble self-sacrifice and loyalty to a cause are developed." or "Here the plot thickens as intrigue deepens, and a major protagonist must face a difficult choice." If you read through the chapters of The Castle of Llyr, the entirety of which I've edited and expanded, you'll get ideas as to how you might word different scenarios or themes. Feel free to invent your own and make your own observations! So! Suggestion #2: Add thematic and/or broad, non-spoiler information to the tops of Chapter articles. My last bit of advice for keeping the Prydain Wiki consistent is to write all narrative summaries, character synopses and descriptions in the past tense, so: "Gwydion rode Melyngar from Caer Dathyl because he was looking for Hen Wen, who had escaped from Caer Dallben when the Horned King came seeking her." The reasons I began altering all verbs in all articles to the past tense are two-fold. One, I noticed that a number of entries (though not all) were already written that way. It seemed less work to change everything to past tense than to change everything to present tense. And two, the past tense imbues a sense of age and distance from the events and characters, reinforcing the reader's awareness that the characters are figures of legend who "lived" long ago. This, I believe, would have been in line with the intent of author Lloyd Alexander. However, when speaking of the story as a story, I've employed the present tense. "The Chronicles describe" or "here the author tells us"; or "in this chapter, we see that Taran was troubled by his longing for Eilonwy". This preserves the usage employed by academics and scholars when such experts discuss folk lore, literature and mythology. And it just makes good sense. So! Suggestion #3: Write narratives and descriptions in the past tense. Write about themes, and the story as a story, in the present tense. Whew! I hope all that isn't too overwhelming. Please comment with any questions or concerns, and as always, enjoy your stay in Prydain. NoahDavidHenson (talk) 18:37, March 6, 2013 (UTC) Templates You can use the following templates to create and/or categorize a variety of different pages. This page was originally written by user Toothless100. *﻿Template: Spoiler - Type to insert the template. It goes at the top of the page and signals that the page contains spoilers. *Template: Black Cauldron - To go at the bottom of a Black Cauldron chapter page. It links to all the other chapter pages for that book, and is inserted by typing at the bottom of the page. Capitalization is important. *Template: Castle of Llyr - See above. *Template: Taran Wanderer - See above. *Template: Stub - The stub template goes at the bottom of a page. It shows that the page lacks content, and extra contributions would be welcome. To insert the stub template, type . The stub template is accessible on any wiki, though designs may differ. *Template: Sectionstub - Same as Template:Stub, but for a specific section of the article. Type to insert. *Template: Cleanup - An alternative for stub if the problem isn't lack of content. Inserted by typing at the top of the page. *Template: Sectioncleanup - Same as Template:Cleanup, but for a specific section of the article. Inserted by typing at the top of the page. *Template:Delete - Marks article for deletion. Type at the top of the page. Here is the template for a Character Fact Table (I've left Eilonwy's info in it as a guide):